Website a great tool to organize helping hands

Q. How can we help our sister who has rheumatoid arthritis? She needs meals brought in when her illness flares up and sometimes help with housework and other chores. We are a generous but disorganized family. What can we do?

A. Often we ask people what they need and how we can help. These general questions are asked out of concern and a genuine desire to assist.

Yet, it is difficult to answer, “Please come over and scrub my toilet, walk the dog and trim the rhododendrons,” when that is exactly what we need.

Daily tasks can become extremely challenging for individuals and their families when a chronic disease flares up, a health crisis hits or when a caregiver’s work leads to exhaustion.

According to Health and Human Services’ National Survey of Families and Households, 52 million informal and family caregivers provide care to someone age 20 or older who is ill or disabled.

First, talk with your sister. Make a list and discuss each aspect of her daily routine. Maybe dinners on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays would be enough to offset her fatigue.

Or maybe she enjoys making her own simple meals, but vacuuming and laundry leave her joints aching. Get very specific information before you make any plans.

One website with an intuitive calendar – www.lotsahelpinghands.com – can assist with naming tasks, updating friends on a person’s medical status and allowing people to schedule themselves for needed help.

The website uses a personal calendar for coordinating volunteers from someone’s many “circles of community.” And personal needs are logged in: Rover needs to get to the vet for his shots. Who can drive?

The system sends reminders to volunteers so no one forgets their commitments.

Here’s how it works:

• On the website go to “create a community” where you will be asked to name your group, such as Mary’s Hometown Helpers. Then, follow the prompts.

• Next, invite people to sign on as part of Mary’s Hometown Helpers. People must be “accepted” as part of the community – just like on Facebook. This screen protects privacy and gives access only to those you want to join.

Our lives are fast-paced, yet our hearts are willing to care for each other. With a Web-based tool, even a disorganized family can offer meaningful gestures that make a difference.

Q. My friend lost her husband about a year ago, and though she’s been sad at times, she doesn’t seem to be going through many of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ famous stages of grief. She returned to work almost right away and has traveled with friends.

I’m worried that one day, she’ll collapse from unprocessed grief. When I asked her about it, she said, “This is just how I’m dealing with it.” Should I be worried?

A. Not necessarily. A recent New Yorker article shed new light on the “staging” theory of grief. It pointed out that Kübler-Ross used those stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – to describe dying people, not necessarily the grief process for survivors.

Modern grief researchers are acknowledging that grief is more complex than believed and individuals will grieve in their own manner, in their own time.

Some will hold onto their grief in ways that worry others. Rebecca’s sister, CarolLynn, lost her husband suddenly when she was just 45. Though this happened 18 years ago, she would never consider remarriage, because she vowed to remain true to Adam to her dying day.

She frequently visits his gravesite, and on the anniversary of his death she revisits their favorite places.

Her grown children were worried about their mother’s grief, but a grief therapist said this response was normal – for CarolLynn.

On the other end of the spectrum, some widows and widowers marry again within a year, despite the conventional wisdom that says the widowed shouldn’t make any major changes for at least a year.

In “A Widow’s Story,” Joyce Carol Oates wrote a very moving account about her acute grief, after suddenly losing her husband of 48 years. Yet just a year after her husband’s death, she remarried.

“Your grief is as personal and unique as your fingerprint; no one else will have the same bereavement experience as you and there is not one ‘correct’ way to respond to loss,” according to Therese A. Rando, founder of the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Loss in Rhode Island.

“There are literally 37 sets of factors that influence any individual’s grief.”

The person grieving is the best judge of what’s appropriate. If grief goes completely underground in a person, it might eventually surface in the form of clinical depression. Then you can get involved.

But the best thing you can do now is listen – if and when your friend wishes to talk about the loss of her husband.